


choose for my triumph an easier end

by whimsicalimages



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Everyone Has Issues, Fix-It, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, James Flint Finds Peace, Kid Fic, Multi, OT4, Peach Farm, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 00:30:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9941162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages
Summary: James finishes loading the peach crates and wipes a sleeve across his face, then turns to see Thomas, Madi and Silver all standing in the doorway and staring at him. “It’s not the theater,” he snarls, gesturing at himself and the peaches and Ruth, who is sitting on the cart swinging her legs back and forth.“No,” Silver agrees. “It’s much more entertaining.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> treasure island? never heard of her. instead, have this short bit of _extremely_ wishful thinking titled after conrad aiken's '[tetelestai](http://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=1&poet=9&poem=962),' the most James Flint™ poem in the world.

It’s going to be an unseasonably warm day – James can already tell from the morning air coming through the window. May has never been his favorite month, and this one’s been a particular slog. Thomas, naturally, loves it. Says the rain makes him feel right at home in spite of the swampy heat.

He exhales, allows himself a full minute to bask in the warmth of Thomas beside him in the bed, then carefully extricates himself from the covers and the limbs tangled with his own.

His efforts at stealth are unsuccessful, as Thomas blinks his eyes open at the rustling and smiles slightly at him. Once upon a time, he was a far heavier sleeper than James or Miranda. Once upon a time, neither of them had nightmares with any great frequency. James shakes off the thought. This is where they are now, by some fickle grace finally allowed to have this.

“Did your men ever tell you that your work ethic lies somewhere between absurd and maniacal?” Thomas drawls as James pulls his trousers on. “It’s a Saturday. Stay in bed.”

“I didn’t need them to tell me what I already knew,” James says. “Go back to sleep. Saturday means market day – I’ll return in a couple of hours.”

“John and Madi will be by with Ruth this afternoon,” Thomas mumbles, already turning back towards the small heap of pillows he’s amassed on his side. “Madi says we’re not to spoil her daughter rotten while her back is turned. I think she’s onto us.”

“She’s always been a sharp one,” James says. “I’ll see you soon.”

He presses a kiss to the crown of Thomas’ head before leaving, shutting the door gently as he goes. The market waits for no man, and for whatever reason their mule refuses to do anything past noon, let alone drag a cart to town, but the peaches await. Silver, several years ago now, had mocked him relentlessly for three months: beginning in June, upon his own retirement from piracy and subsequent discovery of James’ orchard, and ending in late August, when a heavily-pregnant Madi started to demand a fresh peach every morning. That had put paid to any and all barbs about how Billy Bones would react to feared pirate Captain Flint farming in the lowcountry.

He pours himself a cup of yesterday’s stale coffee because he’s never been fond of the stuff anyway, and heads out to the orchard. He’d crated the ripest fruit yesterday; now he just has to get the boxes to the wagon.

Soon you’ll be too old to haul around fruit all summer, and you’ll have to give in to reason and hire a farmhand, Silver had told him a few weeks ago. The real hell of it is, James thinks he might be right. 

Not this year, though. Not yet. He can always push himself just a little more, and reason never started a fight with him that he didn’t win.

He’s successfully moved the first three crates to the wagon, sweat beading on his back and forehead, when something small with what seems like far too many appendages bowls into him, making him stumble.

“Hello, Uncle,” Ruth says with all the solemn imperiousness a six-year-old can muster. The effect is somewhat ruined by the way she’s clinging to his leg.  

“Hello, princess,” James replies. “You’re early. Where are your parents?”

“Outpaced and outmatched by our greatest achievement, who prefers peach-farming strangers to her own flesh and blood,” a new voice calls, accompanied by the thump of a crutch and the appearance of Silver and Madi at the orchard’s edge.

“He’s not a stranger, he’s Uncle James,” Ruth says crossly.

“Ruth, let your uncle go,” Madi says. “He has to finish moving those crates.”

“It’s no bother,” James says, just as Ruth says, “I’m going to help him, then!”

Silver and Madi say no more, content to stand there and watch as James does three times the work he needs to in order to make it seem as if Ruth is helping him. Ingrates.

He finishes loading the peaches and wipes a sleeve across his face, then turns to see Thomas, Madi and Silver all standing in the doorway and staring at him. “It’s not the theater,” he snarls, gesturing at himself and the peaches and Ruth, who is sitting on the cart swinging her legs back and forth.

“No,” Silver agrees. “It’s much more entertaining.”

James sighs, longsuffering. “Ruth, I’m going to the market now. Unless you want to come with me, you may want to hop off the cart and stay with your parents.”

Ruth considers this from all angles. “Can I come to market with you? Charlotte in Uncle Thomas’s class said that she and her father are bringing blueberries this week,” she says, then turns to Silver and Madi with beseeching eyes. “May I, please?”

Madi walks over and bends down to be on eye-level with Ruth. “You may go with your Uncle James,” she says, “but only if you promise to help him bring back blueberries for all of us.”

Ruth nods fervently. “Yes, Mama,” she says. James resolves to take a few extra coins.

“We’ll have tea on when you get back,” Thomas says, herding Silver and Madi inside.

“We’ll make haste,” James says, dry as dust, but they’re already out of range. He looks down at his charge. “What do you think, Ruth? Want to ride the mule?”

“Yes, please!” she says. Her manners are entirely Thomas and Madi’s doing, as neither he nor Silver were exactly experienced in that area. The wildness of her spirit – that’s theirs, much to his chagrin.

Ruth first rides the mule, but the animal seems so dejected about it that eventually James picks her up and puts her on his shoulders. He winces only a little when she immediately pulls at his short queue like it’s a horse’s mane. They have a market to attend.

-

He returns to Thomas serving tea as promised. “I think it could work,” Thomas says, with all the frankly shocking optimism that he is somehow still capable of, after years of imprisonment and drudgery.

“An invalid, a free African woman, and a pair of sodomites walk into the Governor’s office to demand a prohibition on slavery,” Silver says. “Even if we leave out any mention of the adultery or the assorted criminal backgrounds, I believe I know the conclusion to this story. It begins with ‘we all’ and ends with ‘get hanged.’”

“You’ve believed that before and been wrong,” James says, lifting Ruth off his shoulders and placing her on a higher chair.

“Oglethorpe is a Freemason, not a Byzantine,” Thomas points out. “He’s hardly likely to have us killed right there.”

“What are sodomites, Papa?” Ruth asks. Silver turns a shade of crimson that James has only ever seen his daughter able to provoke, and Madi buries her face in her hands.

Thomas simply raises his eyebrows and takes a sip, where many years ago he might have offered to help Silver out.

James can’t say he disapproves of the silence, but he takes pity just the once. “I don’t believe your father is old enough to answer that question, Ruth,” he says. Not that much pity. “You might try asking him again in several years.”

“That’s a long time,” Ruth says. “Are you sure he’ll know by then?”

“It is more likely,” Madi says.

Ruth nods. “Please don’t get hanged,” she says.

“We’ve been in worse scrapes before, but they’ve never taken,” Silver says, then yelps when Madi digs her elbow into his side.  

“We’ll not get hanged, Ruth,” Thomas says. “Have no fear.”

“In any case, we cannot all go. There is no reason for a risk like that,” Madi says, then pauses, gauging something in James’ expression, before continuing. “Thomas and I will go.”

“No,” James says immediately, expecting Silver to also protest. When he doesn’t, James looks at him incredulously.

“Well, you certainly can’t do it, with your whole,” Silver makes a gesture encompassing all of James, before continuing, “everything. And I don’t pass for polite company even on a good day.”

Ruth has put her head on the table, tired from the sun and the walk, and is quietly blowing raspberries, but James resolutely narrows his eyes at Silver.

“You are many things, darling, but ‘diplomatic’ is not one of them, despite any and all emphatic speeches to the contrary,” Thomas cuts him off before he can start. “This way makes the most sense. I never met Oglethorpe the younger, so there’s no reason for him to remember me – I’m simply the independently wealthy landowner Thomas Barlow, who has befriended the Creek and African groups from the settlements on nearby Ossabaw and wants to petition for their continued safety. In conjunction, of course, with Madi, a liaison they trust who is otherwise of no relation to them.”

“And how will you prove any part of that fabrication?” James asks. “Bring a crate of peaches to the meeting?”

A brief silence. Apparently they haven’t pondered this particular aspect in his absence.

“Payment would go a long way,” Madi says at last, and turns to her husband. “Luckily, I know where to find it in abundance.”

Silver frowns. “Billy still has the map and I haven’t been able to track him down,” he says. “In all likelihood it’s no longer there because he’s dug it up, although I suppose I could fish Hands out of whatever hole he’s fallen into and set out to check on it anyway, if we’re not putting a short timeline on this.”

Madi and James share a glance. “No need. The other cache,” James says. “Solid bars of silver from one of Teach’s old hauls. Julius unearthed them some years ago and reburied them on Ossabaw.”

“He has only used some of it for supplying the colony and trading with the Creek,” Madi says. “We will not need the whole remainder, only enough to convince.”

Now it’s Silver’s turn to gape. “There’s that much there? You told me it was a pittance,” he says to James.

“We haven’t needed it before now,” James says. “And compared to what we had, it _was_ a pittance. Compared to what the Honorable Lord Oglethorpe is used to, it certainly isn’t.”

Silver leans back in his chair. “Well,” he says.

“Well,” Madi agrees. “It’s settled.”

“I still don’t like the two of you going alone,” James says, and it costs him so little to admit, now, with these people, that he takes a moment to marvel at the painlessness before realizing he’s clenched his hands into fists. He thinks about Ruth, who has fallen asleep on the table. Thinks about a very different effort with a very different governor. Shoves away the thoughts of carnage that follow.

Thomas puts a hand over his, and James wills himself to exhale the tension, laces their fingers together. “We’ll be fine,” Thomas says. “And we have two dangerous and overbearing former pirates to come to our aid, if need be.”

“Need will not be,” Madi says.

Silver shrugs. “I trust you both,” he says, then slides his eyes to James.

They’ve all known each other too long. All his defenses are shot and he’s never seen the difference between trust and the other thing. “As do I,” James says. “Be safe.”

“I will send word to Julius with one of the local boys,” Madi says, rising from the table. She touches Ruth on the shoulder to wake her.

Ruth lifts her head, rubbing her hands into her eyes. “Are we going, Mama?” she asks. “I didn’t get to read for Uncle Thomas.”

A complicated series of glances is exchanged around the table. “It seems _I_ will send word to Julius with one of the local boys,” Silver says. “I’m taking some of your peaches for the Spaniards tonight, anyway.”

“We’ll stay the night here, Ruth,” Madi says. “Eme will manage one night in our absence.”

Ruth grins and jumps up, tugging on Thomas’ hand to pull him into the study. Madi follows at a more stately pace.

James casts a glance at Silver. “Come on, then,” he says, heading out the back door for the orchard. Perhaps the mule is still feeling amenable.

Silver follows, as always. “Perhaps you should stop selling to them and make this the year that we both cease our criminal activities and scrub the record clean at long last,” he suggests.

James snorts. “You know perfectly well that there’s no scrubbing us clean,” he says. “And England doesn’t give a shit about what happens down here. I’ll sell my peaches to whoever I like.”

“And damn them anyway for trying to stifle the humble enterprising farmer, the backbone of the Georgian economy. Just can’t stop yourself from thumbing your nose at the British Empire, even in your advanced age,” Silver says, smirking. “Sad old man, looking for attention.”

“I could still kill you,” James says, without any heat.

“I’m not too worried about it. Madi would have your guts for garters at speed.”

James rolls his eyes, packs a few crates into the now-spacious cart, hitches it to the mule’s harness.

Silver must see something because he makes his way over to the road, and James looks over to see him giving a piece of paper to one of the boys from town who sometimes come to unsubtly pilfer peaches. James has never told any of them off; it’s not like he doesn’t have fruit to spare, and there’s something in the way Silver looks at them that tugs at a worn, buried thread inside him.

“Mission accomplished,” Silver says, coming back to James’ side. “While I go and barter with the Spaniards, you’ll meet Julius in town to retrieve the silver. I asked him to come in two hours’ time, but I won’t have the cart back by then so perhaps you should just take Sally.”

“The mule’s name isn’t Sally,” James says. “And I’m not taking the mule, you need it for the cart, and we really don’t need that much of the silver. I’ll manage.”

“If you insist on not naming the mule yourself, you’ll have to live with me naming her,” Silver says. “But all right – I think that’s enough crates. I’m conspicuous as it is, and the day’s half over.”

He leans in and kisses James on the cheek, heedless of any neighbors. Not for the first time, James is grateful that the plots of land are large here, and that the people are deliberately incurious.

Silver takes the mule by the harness and begins to lead her away. “John,” James says, and Silver stops, turns back, concern etching into his features.

Silver must read something in his face that James hasn’t been able to articulate, because he’s back in front of him immediately, a hand gentle on his cheek. “What is it?” Silver asks.

“This plan of ours,” James says. “Even if Madi and Thomas convince Oglethorpe, things will only get ugly again when he leaves, and he’s bound to in the coming years. From what I've heard, he's an ambitious man. Then we'll have the Trustees to contend with.”

Silver shrugs. “Then we move to Spanish territory. Helping Madi save her people may well be the only lasting good we did,” he says. “There is no cost too high to pay for their continued safety.”

Great men are made great by one thing and one thing only: the relentless pursuit of a better world, James thinks. “I know,” James says, then forges onward. “But the last time I asked a Governor for something, it ended with someone I loved getting murdered in front of me.”

Silver’s face goes through a complex series of expressions, and he presses their foreheads together, closing his eyes. “This will be different,” Silver says.

“I know,” James says again. “I trust you. And I trust Thomas and Madi.”

Silver leans away, smiles. “Thank you,” he says, disconcertingly genuine. “Go get the cash, and try and muster some faith in the plan. As Thomas said, if things go sideways then we go in, guns blazing. Ruth isn’t losing any of her parents tomorrow, or any time soon.”

“No, she isn’t,” James says, voice thick with unnamed things, and lets him go.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Silver says. “Don’t take too long.”

“I’ll try my best,” James says. He will.

-

He’s evidently the last to return to the house, and things seem quiet when he lays down the pack of silver bars in the kitchen. Ruth is already tucked into bed in the spare room, so James goes directly to the study to find exactly what he was expecting.

Thomas, clearly, has been absorbed into making marginal notes in whatever book he was reading with Ruth, and is tapping the end of the quill to his lips, mouth forming the words in silence.  He’d used to be completely still as he read, but he had confided that talking and reading to himself had helped, when he was in Bethlem. Nobody else had bothered. James shakes off the directionless anger, breathes it out into the night air. “You’re taking your time,” he says, finally.

Thomas looks up at him, corners of his lips curling up. “Ah, but you’re always so patient with me,” Thomas says, spine cracking as he stands and closes the book. Neither of them are young men anymore, but James likes to think that he's gotten a little better at accepting that.  “Enablers, the lot of you.”

“You’re the one who teaches small children their letters and numbers for a living,” James returns. “Your patience is practically saintly compared to mine.”

“Never that,” Thomas says.

Silver appears in the doorway, stripped down to his smallclothes and looking distinctly less than patient. “I’m exhausted and it’s been weeks since we were all in the same place. Come to bed, you two.”

“Well, with a summons like that,” Thomas says wryly. “How could we refuse?”

-

Later, after they’ve dragged themselves downstairs for a late supper and then back upstairs, after all the candles have been blown out and books stowed, they curl together in a bed far too small for four people.

“We’ll attempt this farce tomorrow, then?” James asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“Tomorrow,” Madi agrees, Thomas humming in affirmation.

“It’s not tomorrow yet. For God’s sake, go to sleep,” Silver grumbles.

Thomas shakes with quiet laughter, and James can feel Madi smile against his shoulder. Between one breath and the next, he drifts into sleep, and dreams of golden peaches, sprouting one by one from an oar. 

**Author's Note:**

> WELL i hope y'all enjoyed my desperate coping mechanism. you can find me and yell with me and/or at me about these pirates [here](http://keensers.tumblr.com) on tumblr. thanks for reading!


End file.
